A new study discovered that polluted air contains free radicals that could cause lung problems similar to the ones associated with smoking. The fact that free radicals appear after fuel burning or other air polluting activities has been known for long, but they were believed to disappear in less that a second.

The new study discovered that they actually stick to certain particles found in air and that this way they can continue to exist for days and weeks without anybody knowing anything. What is more, it seems that each day, we breath in 300 cigarettes' worth of such free radicals.

According to the Washington Post, lead researcher H. Barry Dellinger said that “What I found out is that combustion-generated particles contain environmentally persistent free radicals. When the radicals are associated with particles, they can apparently exist indefinitely.”

Free radicals attack human cells and have been known destroy them. This happens because free radicals are highly reactive and can so stick to cells and form new chemical compounds. The free radicals that have been discovered during the study are similar to the ones found in cigarette tar.

This explains how certain non smokers develop diseases that are usually associated with smoking, like lung cancer, asthma or emphysema. However, no scientific proof that these free radicals are associated with these diseases exists so far.

According to Dellinger, “These airborne free radicals are of interest, but I am not sure we are at a point where our scalpel is sharp enough to dissect the individual components of air pollution that cause problems for people.”